


Miss You All The Time

by Bibanana



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, John is a Mess, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mary is a good girlfriend, Post-Reichenbach, Sad, Short One Shot, Sorry!, Warning is for Sherlock's fake death, but he also loves Mary and sherlock is "dead", no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24359623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibanana/pseuds/Bibanana
Summary: A year and a half after Sherlock's "death", John is still heavily grieving. Due to this extended period of sadness and grief, Mary suspects that John and Sherlock may have been more than just friends.
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (on John's part bc Sherlock's dead)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Miss You All The Time

**Author's Note:**

> The song title is inspired by Miss You All The Time by O.A.R. because it came on while I was trying to name this and I thought it fit actually really perfectly.
> 
> This is just a little scene during the years that Sherlock is dead in which Mary confronts John about his so-called "platonic" friendship with Sherlock.
> 
> It's pretty similar to my other fic, Is There Somewhere, located at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23398738

John stared in horror at the television screen. His heart pounded frantically and his breaths caught in his throat.

_ Ongoing Investigations… _

_ Fake Genius Detective-- Not So Fake After All? _

_ Sgt. Sally Donovan and Forensic Scientist Phillip Anderson… _

John’s fists balled as a picture of those two idiots flashed across the screen. Those morons, they didn’t see, they never saw, only what they wanted to see, only what was easiest to see. They did this. Sherlock was human, as human as anyone else, and despite what he said, he  _ did _ care what people said about him. So much so that he had decided to leave the world that didn’t believe him.

_ I believed you, Sherlock. _ John’s eyes welled up.  _ I would have been there for you. You could have spoken to me, told me that it really hurt you so much. I would have helped you. _

Sherlock wasn’t a fake. John had known all along, even when Sherlock himself had tried to convince him, up on that rooftop.

_ “The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade, I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly. In fact, tell anyone who will listen to you. That I created Moriarty for my own purposes.” _ His voice had been shaking, as if he was crying. John had never seen Sherlock cry before, not even when they thought that Irene had died. But there, up on that rooftop, his tone had been thick with emotion. All the emotion that he bottled up inside as those imbeciles spread lies about him, all the emotion that he should have told John existed.  _ “Goodbye, John.” _

John groaned and rested his face in his hands. He heard Mary walk out of their bedroom.

“I’m going to meet Kate for lunch, I’ll see you-” She paused, looking at John, then the telly, then back at John. “Oh, honey.” She rushed to sit next to him on the sofa.

He looked up and gave a weak smile. “Yeah. Sorry. Go eat with Kate.”

“This is good!” Mary cupped his face with one hand and brushed her thumb over his cheek. “They finally are going to prove him innocent. This is a good thing.”

“Yeah.” John took a breath, fighting to regain control of himself.

“John,” Mary started tentatively, not looking her boyfriend directly in the eyes. “He, ah, he was your friend?”

John’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “What? Yes, of course! He was my… best friend.”  
“And that’s all?” She bit her lower lip. “ _Just_ your best friend?”

John gave a dry, humourless laugh. “Oh, don’t you start. He’s been dead over a year and a half and this is  _ still _ happening.”

“Exactly. A year and a half and you are still a wreck over his death.” Mary winced at the slightly provocative tone she had taken on. She spoke her next words gently. “I have lost friends before, sweetie. And it hurt, it really hurt, but I was always able to move on. It’s harder to move on when it’s someone you loved. Especially when you never got to tell that person how you felt.”

John shook his head, scoffing. “I am not  _ gay _ ! You sound like bloody Mrs. Hudson.”

“Just because you’re not gay doesn’t mean you can’t-- wait, who’s Mrs. Hudson?”

John’s chest squeezed with guilt. He hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Hudson since… “Oh, she’s no one.”

She eyed him suspiciously but nodded. “Okay, well neither I or  _ Mrs. Hudson _ can really tell you what you are or aren’t.” Just then, her mobile rang. She glanced down. “Shit, that’s Kate. Love, I’m really sorry, she’s probably wondering where I am. Do you want me to cancel? I can just tell her that something came up-”

John put his hand over hers. “No. I’m fine.  _ Go _ .”

Mary gave him one last concerned look before gathering her wallet and keys. Before she left, she planted a quick kiss on his lips and in that moment, John couldn’t be more grateful. 

After Sherlock was the most miserable period of his life. It was even worse than before Sherlock, a time plagued with nightmares and not enough money to cover dinner most nights, much less a therapist. But after Sherlock wasn’t even a life at all. After the lanky, curly haired, slightly eccentric, sodding  _ git _ had flung himself off of Bart’s Hospital, John hadn’t really been living. He had been empty, dead inside, emotionless. Until Mary came along. The darkness was still with him and his life would never be complete without Sherlock, but at least it was a life at all.

Mary hadn’t asked him about Sherlock. In the months after the fall, John had gotten countless calls from newspapers asking,  _ did you know he was a fraud? Were you his accomplice? Did you know he would kill himself? _ . People ambushed him in the grocery store and left years worth of comments on his blog. But Mary, she didn’t ask about him. She treated him as a regular man, as if Sherlock Holmes had never even existed. Eventually, later in their relationship, the subject had to be spoken of, and Mary  _ did _ have questions, but she didn’t ask the same questions that the media did. She didn’t ask about Moriarty or that last phone call. She asked about the person he had been. The  _ hero _ he had been, who brought justice to so many victims and prevented even more deaths. And then, Mary put up with his moping and sudden bursts of anger and unexplained sobbing in the middle of the night. Mary loved John, prolonged grief and all.

And she had been the only one, up until then, who didn’t assume that they had been a couple.

John had been reinforcing his heterosexuality long before Sherlock, well into his childhood. He remembered how his father shouted expletives at Harry the first time she had brought home a girl. He remembered how his mother snarled biblical rubbish into Harry’s face and told her that unless she ‘fixed’ herself, she would no longer be welcome in their home. He remembered watching Harry spiral down a path of alcoholism and he remembered being too young to really understand what was happening. He remembered his parents making an example out of his older sister, telling him that he better not end up like her.

He remembered standing in front of his mum and dad, promising that he would never commit such a horrible sin, as Harry stood silently in the corner, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Harry had forgiven him, of course. He had been just a boy, merely trying to please his parents. Throughout his teens, it became habit to defend his straightness, and even when he fought back against his parents’ toxic ways, he never broke that promise. He was now too far in to break it. He had spent so much time and energy convincing himself and others that he wasn’t gay (nobody ever bothered to ask about bisexual) that now that he had a nice girlfriend who he would happily spend the rest of his life with, and was a middle-aged man, what was the point of saying otherwise?

People always assumed that John was in love with his flatmate, Sherlock, and John would never admit that it was true. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
